I was suddenly aware of being very alone inside the confines of the vehicle. Reynolds’s face loomed in my mind’s eye and I experienced a momentary wish, entirely selfish, that Sean had left the gun behind. Then it passed. If either of these two was a threat to Ella, then I’d much rather Sean was armed. He would, I knew, use the Beretta without a qualm if he had to, to protect the child. Regardless of the consequences.
It was hard to realize just how much I missed Ella. Her inventive food combinations, her occasionally sage pronouncements, her comical grumpiness first thing in the morning. I missed them all with a sharpness that surprised me.
I remembered Sean’s report on Lucas’s behavior towards his daughter as a baby, the injuries Simone had received before her mother had divorced him and run. He’d been a bully, pure and simple. Would he return to that now?
You didn’t just stop abusing. Lucas might not always have had the opportunity to indulge himself-certainly not since he left the army-but now he had another child to take his temper out on, over time he would surely revert to type. It was human nature.
And it was up to me and Sean to stop him before he hurt her.
The Explorer had started to mist up a little and the cold had a sullen dampness to it. Sean had left the keys in the ignition and I leaned across and flipped the engine on, just to run some heat through the car. The front screen demisted slowly.
It was another twenty minutes before I saw the Lucases emerge. Greg Lucas was carrying three bags of shopping in each hand, and his wife had Ella balanced on her hip.
They were some distance away and I craned forwards, trying to read Ella’s body language. Was there anything about her that seemed scared or anxious? She was wearing a pink jacket with a fake-fur-trimmed hood that was up around her face, and she had one hand to her mouth, probably chewing her hair. I could almost hear Simone’s voice telling her daughter to stop it.
While Lucas sorted his car keys and put the bags away, Rosalind stood happily holding Ella, rocking with her and talking, their heads very close together. Ella reached out and touched Rosalind’s hair and she smiled. Whatever Lucas’s feelings towards his granddaughter, I saw Rosalind was forming quite a bond. I wondered why that fact hurt me quite so much.
Now, Lucas fumbled a little with the keys and it was Rosalind who put Ella down long enough to open the tailgate of the Range Rover. Ella stood, a couple of paces away, fiddling with the buttons on her coat, in a world of her own while people hurried past to their cars.
I skimmed the sparse crowd for signs of danger but could see nothing immediate. I couldn’t see Vaughan’s men, either-or Sean. Not seeing them and knowing they were there was worse by far. I shifted in my seat, only too frustratingly aware of my physical limitations. They could be planning just about anything and I wouldn’t be able to stop them.
Then the bags were inside the back of the Range Rover and Rosalind was fussing with the order of them, leaving Lucas to turn his full attention to Ella. I tensed as he crouched in front of her. I was watching them through the side window with Ella three-quarters facing me and Lucas almost dead side on. I could see both their faces, blurred slightly by the distance between us. Ella’s showed a trace of wariness and her eyes kept darting over Lucas’s shoulder-then back over her own-as though she was expecting something major to come and take her away. Or she was waiting for someone.
Lucas stroked a gentle hand down her flushed cheek. And it was gentle. There was no hidden message in the gesture. It was affection and nothing more.
The driver’s door of the Explorer swung open and my head whipped round so fast I nearly ricked my neck.
“Sean!” I said. “Damn, you put the wind up me.”
“Nice to know you’re getting something out of it,” he said as he climbed in, throwing a small bag of groceries onto the backseat-a decoy to allow him to linger at the checkout. “My God, it’s like an oven in here.”
“Sorry, being so inactive makes me feel the cold like crazy,” I said. “So, what happened in there?”
He shrugged his way out of his coat. “They came. They shopped. They went,” he said. “The two guys we saw didn’t do much beyond hang around trying to attract the attention of security-or that’s what it seemed like, anyway. They followed Lucas around, flexing their muscles, then left at the same time as we did.”
“But they didn’t try anything?”
“No, why?”
“I just thought Ella was looking a bit uneasy, that’s all,” I said, turning back to watch the Range Rover. Lucas had the rear door open now and was strapping Ella into her seat.
Sean looked a little discomfited. ‘Ah, well, she spotted me,” he said.
I said nothing, just turned back and raised my eyebrows. He gave me a wry smile.
“She didn’t say anything, I don’t think, but that doesn’t mean she won’t at some point.”
We were both silent for a moment. The Range Rover’s brake lights flicked on as they climbed in and Lucas started the engine.
“What are we hoping for here, Sean?” I asked. “That we’ll catch them mistreating her? That we’ll stumble across some reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to keep her?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly, “but at least we’re watching her- watching out for her. And it’s not just the Lucases we have to worry about, is it?”
As he spoke, the blue Ford we’d seen Vaughan’s men arrive in turned up the row where the Range Rover was parked. The Taurus accelerated hard towards them, then braked to an abrupt halt, blocking Lucas in. I tensed in my seat, waiting for the attack.
“Sean!”
He already had the Beretta out of his pocket, but there was no clear shot. And, besides, nobody had emerged from either car. Standoff. The Taurus sat there for half a minute, ticking over, the men inside staring at Lucas, who was staring right back at them through layers of glass and mirrors.
As abruptly as it had arrived, the Taurus pulled away, rearing back on its suspension as the driver planted the pedal, engine and transmission protesting hard enough to turn heads. A warning, then. Nothing more. But a warning about what?
There was a brief pause. Then the Range Rover swung out of its space, lurching a little to show that Lucas had been as unsettled by the whole thing as, no doubt, he was supposed to be.
We followed them out onto the main road, keeping three cars between us. Lucas had been through all the same training Sean had and in some ways it was a surprise he hadn’t spotted us tailing him before, but now he would definitely be on his guard.
“What are we going to do about this, Sean?” I demanded. “We can’t follow them around forever. What good are we doing?”
“Parker’s legal man is making progress,” Sean said. “He seems to think Matt’s claim for Ella is stronger, bearing in mind she’s lived with him all her life. He thinks Matt would get custody if it came to a fight.”
“Which Matt can’t afford to fund,” I put in. “Is Harrington prepared to back him?”
Sean shrugged, braking for traffic lights. “Well, we’ll just-,” he began, then broke off as his mobile phone started to ring. He checked the incoming number and handed the phone to me. “It’s Neagley,” he said.
I answered the phone. “Sean’s driving,” I told the private eye. “What’s up?”